1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus having a schedule management function, such as an electronic organizer, a portable terminal tool, a personal computer or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
As of the past few years, an information processing apparatus having a schedule management function has been widely used. Among such processing apparatus, an electronic organizer, which is always brought with and used in place of a memo pad, is frequently used by those who travel around the world or who have business with clients in foreign countries. For such purposes, there is an apparatus which is capable of simultaneously storing and displaying a date and time of a city in a foreign country with a time difference, in which a client resides, as well as a standard date and time of a reference city.
For example, in an apparatus disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 4-65760, a schedule is converted in advance in accordance with an input standard time of a site 1 so as to conform to a standard time of a certain site 0, and stored in a storage. Thereafter, when the stored schedule is to be displayed, the stored schedule is converted so as to conform to a standard time of a desired site 2. Thus, a user of the apparatus need not to calculate a time difference between the sites during performing input and confirmation.
Specifically, the apparatus has a configuration shown in FIG. 7. After a time difference between a certain site 0 and a site 1 which is a reference site for a schedule to be input is input from a time difference input section 64, a schedule including a date and time is input from a schedule input section 61. Then, in accordance with the date and time and the time difference of the stored schedule, the schedule is converted so as to conform to a standard time of the site 0, and then, the converted schedule is stored in a schedule storage section 62. In displaying, schedule data from the schedule storage section 62 is converted in a convert section 65 into a date and time conformable to a standard time of a desired site 2 in accordance with a time difference input from the time difference input section 64, and thereafter, the converted data is displayed in the schedule display section 63.
In a conventional apparatus performing schedule management, when a user inputs a transfer schedule between cities having a time difference therebetween, or a schedule in a city having a different standard time from a city in which the user ordinarily resides, the user needs to calculate and input a local time of a destination city having a different timetable from that of a city in which the user ordinarily resides, in accordance with a time difference.
Especially, regarding the transfer schedule with a time difference, since a departing time is based on a standard time of a city being left, whereas an arriving time is based on a standard time of a city being travelled to, a switching of the time difference is required during input. As a result, the number of steps of manipulation increases. Since it sometimes happens that an arriving date and time is earlier than a departing date and time, in such a case, the user might make mistakes both during input and displaying.
Alternatively, even when the user is in a city having a timetable other than that of a city in which the user ordinarily resides, in the case where the apparatus displays a schedule based on the timetable of the city in which the user ordinarily resides, the user might misread date and time data in the schedule.
The present invention provides an information processing apparatus having a schedule management function. The information processing apparatus of the present invention includes: a display section for displaying temporal axes of at least two different cities on a schedule display screen in accordance with a time difference therebetween; a pointing section for pointing to each of the temporal axes of the different cities displayed by the display section; and an input section for inputting a time and a city of the temporal axis, which are pointed to by the pointing section, as a schedule.
In one embodiment, the display section further displays a schedule corresponding to a temporal axis of a reference city which is one of the at least two different cities; and the display section simultaneously displays the temporal axis of the reference city, a temporal axis of a city other than the reference city and the schedule corresponding to the temporal axis of the reference city, in accordance with the time difference between the reference city and the city other than the reference city.
In another embodiment, the display section separately displays the temporal axis of the reference city and the temporal axis of the city other than the reference city.
In still another embodiment, the display section displays a temporal axis of a city to which a user of the apparatus intends to transfer in place of the temporal axis of the reference city, in accordance with the schedule of a transfer between cities having time differences therebetween.
Thus, the invention described herein makes possible the advantage of providing an information processing apparatus which allows a user to easily understand a time and a schedule content when the user transfers between cities having a time difference therebetween.
This and other advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying figures.